My group of 8 IAF Strike Eagles dissolved after delivering their main payload of GBUs on target but I wanted them to loiter, as a group, at a RP in case I needed them for air cover. Next time I'll select them and re-group them using "G" but I'm wondering why the game logic "dissolves" groups in this way?

Try Game/Side Doctrine + RoE/RTB when winchester set to No. It should solve the problem.

I think this may be why. If RTB Winchester is selected, and the assets came from different bases, then not dissolving the group would make it impossible for all aircraft to comply with the RTB order. Creates a logical paradox. If you want the group to stay a group, don't let them go home.

Try Game/Side Doctrine + RoE/RTB when winchester set to No. It should solve the problem.

I think this may be why. If RTB Winchester is selected, and the assets came from different bases, then not dissolving the group would make it impossible for all aircraft to comply with the RTB order. Creates a logical paradox. If you want the group to stay a group, don't let them go home.

it will do this even if they are from the same base. but yeah don't let them return if Winchester.

If you're going to do a primary and secondary target type of mission plot and manual drop your weapons. This type of mission is geared for a more customized approach.

In the future we will be building out a more detailed strike editor. Rag and D are huge flight sim fans and want many of the features you see there. Very large project that will take time but one I'm guessing will be taken on.

Ahhh, Tornado. It had the best mission planner of any flight sim ever (and, IMO, the only one to model TOT properly. The DCS sims can't do it).

Really? Never tried Tornado, but was a virtual fighter wing pilot in Falcon4 until I was grounded (married) in 2003. I liked the Falcon4 (well, after a bunch of community patches) mission planner a lot!

Ahhh, Tornado. It had the best mission planner of any flight sim ever (and, IMO, the only one to model TOT properly. The DCS sims can't do it).

Really? Never tried Tornado, but was a virtual fighter wing pilot in Falcon4 until I was grounded (married) in 2003. I liked the Falcon4 (well, after a bunch of community patches) mission planner a lot!

How does Tornado compare to F4?

Cheers!

In Tornado you could plan TOTs with great precision. This enabled you to use the mission editor to plot, say, a multi-axis, multi-platform timed airfield strike with AI Tornadoes flying SEAD with ALARMs, Eagles on CAP and three main strike groups of Tornadoes, one tasked with hitting the control tower with Mk84s, one to suppress remaining non-radar airfield defences and the other to crater the runway with JP233 baluted munitions delivered along the runway length from 200ft AGL. Each of these missions could be planned with airspeeds and flight profiles guaranteed to get the aircraft to their IPs on time and then to fly a coordinated ingress. The AI missions, if properly planned and timed, would go off like clockwork and if you took the runway-denial mission yourself, you would fly the TOT caret in your HUD, which would calculate en route airspeed on the fly and get you to your IP and then to the target in perfect synchronisation with the AI flights. Or the autopilot could fly the profile, adjusting speed as required to conform to the TOT, with terrain following activated for NOE approaches. It was a thing of beauty. I've flown many hours in both F4 and DCS A-10, both highly sophisticated sims, yet neither come close to continuously computing TOTs dynamically. The planning tools and the TOT HUD caret is there, but for whatever reason, their engines just can't generate Tornado's level of computed precision, either for the AI or for the human sim pilot in the 3-D world.

Ahhh, Tornado. It had the best mission planner of any flight sim ever (and, IMO, the only one to model TOT properly. The DCS sims can't do it).

The 'DID Tornado' strike mission planner (supposedly) borrowed ideas from the real Tornado GR.4 mission planning system. It was a fantastic piece of software, and I'm currently looking into getting at least some of those features into Command.

Trouble is that in Command you won't just be planning a single 6-plane strike, but series of strike packages with up to a hundred aircraft each that will need to coordinate strike, escort, SEAD, EW, AEW and tankers. It is a huge undertaking and we'll have to do it in baby steps.

In Tornado you could plan TOTs with great precision. This enabled you to use the mission editor to plot, say, a multi-axis, multi-platform timed airfield strike with AI Tornadoes flying SEAD with ALARMs, Eagles on CAP and three main strike groups of Tornadoes, one tasked with hitting the control tower with Mk84s, one to suppress remaining non-radar airfield defences and the other to crater the runway with JP233 baluted munitions delivered along the runway length from 200ft AGL. Each of these missions could be planned with airspeeds and flight profiles guaranteed to get the aircraft to their IPs on time and then to fly a coordinated ingress. The AI missions, if properly planned and timed, would go off like clockwork and if you took the runway-denial mission yourself, you would fly the TOT caret in your HUD, which would calculate en route airspeed on the fly and get you to your IP and then to the target in perfect synchronisation with the AI flights. Or the autopilot could fly the profile, adjusting speed as required to conform to the TOT, with terrain following activated for NOE approaches. It was a thing of beauty. I've flown many hours in both F4 and DCS A-10, both highly sophisticated sims, yet neither come close to continuously computing TOTs dynamically. The planning tools and the TOT HUD caret is there, but for whatever reason, their engines just can't generate Tornado's level of computed precision, either for the AI or for the human sim pilot in the 3-D world.

ORIGINAL: emsoy The 'DI Tornado' strike mission planner (supposedly) borrowed ideas from the real Tornado GR.4 mission planning system. It was a fantastic piece of software, and I'm currently looking into getting at least some of those features into Command.

Trouble is that in Command you won't just be planning a single 6-plane strike, but series of strike packages with up to a hundred aircraft each that will need to coordinate strike, escort, SEAD, EW, AEW and tankers. It is a huge undertaking and we'll have to do it in baby steps.

...which is why, as much as I love Tornado's planner, I consider F4's one as a better model for us. IIRC Tornado's planner had details like turn-rates etc. hardcoded directly into the planner code. Weapon release paramaters were also directly embedded on the program. With 2 aircraft types and a dozen weapons you can get away with that; with thousands of different aircraft and weapons it becomes plainly impossible.

Tornado's flight planner was amazing. You could do everything already mentioned above but also had the ability to specify the attack profile for each aircraft. You could select between Loft, Laydown and Manual for each weapon and aircraft in the attack (although I seem to remember AI aircraft couldn't fly Loft profiles). It was a thing of beauty - a truly great sim. What I wouldn't give for a remake...

I keep a dedicated PC with dosbox and XP to run Tornado as well as Jane's Longbow & Longbow 2, Jane's F-15 and Jane's F/A-18. Play them regularly. In fact I'm off to do that now...who needs DCS?

Emsoy I will definitely put my mind to how a strike planner might be integrated into Command. I would not get too hung up on realism on a flight sim (i.e. Tornado) level, as CMANO is a top-down operational level game in which the player is the commander, not the pilot, flight lead or even squadron c/o. This means you can abstract a LOT of CPU-intensive things like precise physics and weapon performance modeling.

A good place to start would be to think of a strike planner as a logistical tool (think of Desert Storm) capable of assembling packages, matching them with a prioritized target list and using time as a key element with TOT and IP coordination modeled. This means you'll need to model altitude and airspeed dynamically and put a clock into the game essentially. There's a great book about air strike planning on a massive scale in Desert Storm; I will look it up and post info here after the school runů

EDIT: Storm over Iraq: Air Power and the Gulf War by Richard P. Hallion